Braced but unprepared: That's the sober scouting report American teenagers have offered for their future in inheriting a generation's legacy of environmental setbacks, a key report on innovation and science education said on Wednesday.

Nearly three out of four students surveyed in the annual Lemelson-MIT Invention Index think high-tech inventions can help solve issues such as climate change and natural-resource depletion within the next 10 years—and 64 percent of them think they could come up with the a-ha moment themselves, compared to 38 percent of adults. The problem? A majority of United States teens say their science education is lacking and that they aren't prepared to pursue careers in engineering and technology.

With U.S. students already falling behind 16 other countries in standardized science tests, a new generation's dwindling confidence in their own school system is a troubling trend, experts say—one that even led 79 percent of students in the Lemelson study to call for more funding in hands-on science education.

Any drag in that funding could affect future American research in areas beyond simply the environment, to national security, the economy and more, says Shawn Carlson, a MacArthur fellow and the director of the Society for Amateur Scientists. "As a first-ranked economic power, we could lose our edge to other nations with lower labor costs and access to technology," says Carlson, who serves on PM's Editorial Board of Advisors. "Other higher-population countries understand that our vastly superior military technology trumps their numerical advantage, but our technological advantage could change."

Carlson pushed a community-based approach to extracurricular education at a panel on science education during PM's 2007 Breakthrough Conference, and he echoed those sentiments after seeing Wednesday's numbers, which also showed dramatic drops in sci/tech preparedness for teenage girls and black students. "We need programs that stimulate science week-in and week-out during the teenage years, when kids are making those critical decisions," he says. "Not every child is going to be interested in science. For the students who are, we need outside programs that will allow their talent and passion to take them as far as they can go."

One example of science education done right comes from Kona, Hawaii, where one alternative public charter school's curriculum is based almost entirely on hands-on projects (pictured above). At the West Hawaii Explorations Academy, co-director Curtis Muraoka has seen enrollment triple over the past 12 years as students decide which projects to work on based on their own personal interests. "We had a student who didn't think she wanted to be a marine biologist," Muraoka says, "but she was exposed to marine biology, and now, after graduating college, she works with invasive seaweed as fertilizer on a golf course—so nitrogen doesn't need to go into the soil and pollute the ocean."